Generally, a chip resistor includes a rectangular parallelepiped insulating substrate, a pair of front electrodes, a resistive element, an insulating protective layer, a pair of back electrodes, a pair of end-surface electrodes, and a pair of external electrodes. The insulating substrate is made of ceramics. The pair of front electrodes are disposed on a front surface of the insulating substrate so as to be opposite to each other with interposition of a predetermined interval therebetween. The resistive element is provided on the front surface of the insulating substrate so as to be connected to the pair of front electrodes. The protective layer is provided so as to cover the resistive element. The pair of back electrodes are disposed on a back surface of the insulating substrate so as to be opposite to each other with interposition of a predetermined interval therebetween. The pair of end-surface electrodes are provided on opposite end surfaces of the insulating substrate so as to establish electrical continuity between the front electrodes and the back electrodes respectively. The pair of external electrodes are formed by plating treatment on outer surfaces of the end-surface electrodes.
Usually, such a chip resistor is produced in the following manner. That is, electrodes, resistive elements, a protective layer, etc. corresponding to a large number of chip resistors are collectively formed on a large-sized substrate. Then, the large-sized substrate is divided into grids so as to obtain individual chip elements. As such a division method, there has been widely known a method in which division grooves each formed into a V-shape in section are provided in a grid pattern in the large-sized substrate in advance, and the large-sized substrate is broken along these division grooves. However, as the chip resistor is miniaturized in recent years, there has been used another method in which the large-sized substrate is cut by dicing instead of providing the division grooves.
In such a division method using dicing, the protective layer has to be provided before dicing is performed. For this reason, when the front electrodes and the resistive elements are covered with the protective layer, dicing positions become unable to recognize. In the worst case, a problem of cutting the resistive elements by dicing may arise.
In order to solve such a problem, the following method has been proposed, as disclosed in PTL 1. That is, a plurality of recognition marks are formed in advance in a dummy region of a peripheral portion of a large-sized substrate and simultaneously with resistive elements, and a fixation tape is pasted on an inner region than these recognition marks. Then, dicing is performed using the recognition marks exposed in the outside of the fixation tape, as reference positions. In this case, it is impossible to confirm positions of electrodes or the resistive elements from above the fixation tape but the recognition marks are formed simultaneously with the resistive elements and in the dummy region exposed in the circumference of the fixation tape. Therefore, when dicing positions are determined with reference to the recognition marks, it is possible to prevent the resistive elements from being cut by mistake.